Share Scams and ways to Detect Online Fraudsters

There are a host of scams. Professional Internet promoters, some with elaborate briefing sites and any number of ways to avoid regulators.Masquerading as ‘Analysts’ they offer a range of services. And look very appealing. The content of www.financialWeb.com/stockdetective is packed with scams and promotion devices, names people and companies and shows Web site URL’s.

It has a marvellous page of alleged scams called 'Stinky Stocks'. Not all such sites are so safe to visit. Some offer information about scams and are the heart of them as well.

The Canadian Globe and Mail reported in April 1998 that regulators in three countries investigated an international stock sales scam involving a group that used a Canadian brokerage firm's Web site to lend itself credibility. The group, which sold stock in fictitious companies to victims in Sweden, operated under the name Turner Phillips and said its head office was in Vancouver.In fact, regulators have no idea where the firm operated from or who is behind it, Lang Evans, compliance officer at the British Columbia Securities Commission, said: "It's quite an elaborate scam. . . . We're not even certain that the names are anything more than pseudonyms or aliases."

The BCSC published notices to alert the public to the fraud, which used boiler-room sales techniques and the Internet to pitch shares to investors. The notice said the scheme "has been recently conducted on an international scale, resulting in the loss ofmillions of dollars to affected investors world-wide."